I was thinking about this. I went to university, and I worked in tech for decades. I met many assholes but I didn’t meet anyone that would fit on the left half of the bell curve (less than 100 iq).
Since I’ve been living in that bubble my entire life, I’m curious of your stories. Have you met someone who was actually quite dumb (not just having opinions you don’t agree with) and do you have an example situation you remember you can share?
Hopefully this becomes more funny than hateful since intelligence is not the value of a person, but it can be funny to read the stories.
I sincerely believe that one should make an effort to at least sometimes go out and meet different people. Sure, there are people who you don’t want to meet, cruel, uncaring, hateful, and so on. But that is not based on intelligence.
I’ve met my share of not-so-bright people. No funny stories, I don’t want to make fun of people for being “stupid” either.
But I’ve been in a sports club with some very intelligent and not-so-intelligent people, I’d argue that you can find a good cross section of society in there.
One guy seemed to have some kind of mental disability, and also quite a fan of alcohol, which didn’t help either. He was being “mentored” by one of the older guys in the club, and he was, generally, doing an ok job at “life”, given the cards he was dealt.
Another guy just wasn’t that smart, in the traditional sense. Nice, friendly, hard-working, well organised, with a strong sense of right and wrong, with a wife and a child and all that. Thinking of it, he has a (presumably) happy family, while I have a college degree and am shit-posting on the internet in my underwear by myself. One of us is winning at life, and I feel it isn’t me…
Then, I’ve specteted a class for a rather low-skill job in a not-so-nice city once. Not special ed, regular class for people who want to get a certain (rather low) post-high-school certificate. I’ve sat with some people, and they were on a visit to the town electricity provider, who was trying to teach them (on a high level) how a power plant works. With one guy I was sitting with, there was just no chance. The concept of how burning gas turns a turbine, which turns a generator, which makes the lights go on just didn’t fit into his brain. Super nice guy, but that was just out of his reach.
I have met a fair share of people at college as well. There are some people who are kind of unable to think for themselves, regardless of “intelligence” (whatever that is). College is likely the first time they have to figure out things on their own, with nobody telling them how to do it. I remember deliberately giving people tasks that seemed trivial to me in some kind of TA role, like “we used this device $X in the past, but it is too heavy, can you google for something like $X but maybe only 100g max?” and they were completely lost. All they had to do was type things into the search bar, click links, and look for “specs” and “weight”. I can only guess they had parents do everything for them.